The Broker of Bogota

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Broker of Bogota, The (1834), a tragedy by Robert Montgomery Bird. [Bowery Theatre, in repertory.] Because he keeps bad company, Ramon ( David Ingersoll) has been disinherited by his father, the honest, respected moneylender Batista Febro ( Edwin Forrest). As a result the Viceroy of New Granada will not allow Ramon to marry his daughter Juana ( Mrs. McClure). Ramon is goaded by the profligate Antonio De Cabarero ( Henry Wallack) to rob his father and then claim that Batista himself staged the robbery. Batista is convicted, and, to compound his woes, his daughter Leonor ( Mrs. Flynn) elopes with Fernando ( H. Jones), the Viceroy's son. “The blows that bruise the body are not much,” he wails, “when the heart is crushed.” Juana, learning of Ramon's treachery, berates him. Filled with remorse, he commits suicide, and Batista is exonerated but dies of a broken heart. Although the tragedy's blank verse and general construction were Elizabethan, the play was well received and remained in producer‐actor Forrest's repertory for most of his career. No doubt Forrest's acting played a large part in its popularity, for the play was rarely revived after his death. Nevertheless, Quinn wrote, “Certainly in the character of ‘Febro,’ with his middle‐class mind, lifted into tragedy by his passionate love for his children and his betrayal by his oldest and best loved son, Bird drew one of the most living portraits in our dramatic history.”

Broker of Bogotá, The, domestic tragedy by R.M. Bird, produced in 1834 and first published in Quinn's Representative American Plays (1917).

Baptista Febro is an honest moneylender in 18th‐century Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia. He loves his eldest son, Ramon, despite the fact that he keeps low company. Ramon's friend Cabrero urges him to rob his father to obtain money to marry his beloved Juana. The robbery is perpetrated, and Cabrero causes it to appear that Febro has robbed himself of funds deposited with him. Ramon, brought in as a witness, refuses to speak and his father is condemned. After Juana forces her lover to confess his guilt, he is overcome by remorse and kills himself. When Febro learns of this, he dies.